Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences news

Disaster aid needs coordination

June 2005

International emergency relief to survivors of the Banda Aceh tsunami and Nias earthquake was uncoordinated and often inappropriate, Monash University wound care expert Ms Jan Rice has said.

Ms Rice, the manager of Education and Clinical Services with the Wound Foundation of Australia at Monash University’s Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, said a central body such as the World Health Organisation or the United Nations should coordinate emergency relief operations.

Ms Rice arrived in Banda Aceh on 28 March, three months after the tsunami, to give nursing lectures to surgical ward staff. She was deployed to Nias the next night, when the earthquake struck, and she stayed until 19 April.

In Nias, Ms Rice conducted reconnaissance trips to find victims and organise their medical evacuations. She also set up male and female surgical wards and a surgical outpatient clinic, helped supply those clinics and trained the staff.

“Aid groups were doing everything they could and really working hard, but they were virtually competing with each other,” Ms Rice said. “The efforts were not coordinated so a lot of effort was replicated or wasted.”

Ms Rice said thousands of boxes of donated medical supplies were unusable because they were out-of-date or couldn’t be stored at the correct temperature. 

“When I attempted to access some of the donated supplies, I found literally thousands of boxes of medicines that were either out of date or were not able to be stored properly at the correct temperature. Donation of goods should go through a central agency, and these agencies in each country should have a united approach,” Ms Rice said.

“The world responded in a way never seen before to these two disasters. It seemed every single person or organisation had gone to some trouble to pack up what they considered spare, and donate it to the people of Banda Aceh and Nias.

“Months later, the people of those areas are still trying to sort through the goods. Much of the donations will end up as landfill because of damage, being out of date or unusable,” she said.